Daddy What's A Train

Most everybody who knows me knows that I'm a train nut. In Dayton, Ohio, when I was 12 years old during the Second World War, there was a railroad that went close by Greenmont Village. A bunch of the kids and I built a fort out of old railroad ties, half dug in the ground and half above the ground. We let a bum sleep in there one night - I think he was the first railroad bum I remember meeting - came back the next day and it had been burned down. He'd evidently set it on fire or started it accidentally.
Playing around in that fort we'd see the big steam engines run by. The engineers would wave, and the parlor shack back in the crummy - that's the brakeman who stays in the caboose - would wave, too. Put your ear down on the rail and you could hear the trains coming. We'd play games on the ties and swing ourselves on the rails. Also we'd pick up a lot of coal to take home. I understand that during the Depression a lot of families kept their homes warm by going out along the right of way and picking up coal that had fallen out of the coal tenders.
This song is written for my little boy Duncan. His grandfather, Raymond P. Jensen, was a railroad man for over 40 years on the Union Pacific, working as an inspector. There's a lot of railroading in Duncan's family, but he hasn't ridden trains very much.

(sung to chorus tune)
When I was just a boy living by the track
Us kids'd gather up the coal in a great big gunny sack,
And then we'd hear the warning sound as the train pulled into view
And the engineer would smile and wave as she went rolling through;

(spoken)
She blew so loud and clear
That we covered up our ears
And counted cars as high as we could go.
I can almost hear the steam
And the big old drivers scream
With a sound my little boy will never know.

I guess the times have changed and kids are different now;
Some don't even seem to know that milk comes from a cow.
My little boy can tell the names of all the baseball stars
And I remember how we memorized the names on railroad cars -

The Wabash and TP
Lackawanna and IC
Nickel Plate and the good old Santa Fe;
Names out of the past
And I know they're fading fast
Every time I hear my little boy say.

Well, we climbed into the car and drove down into town
Right up to the depot house but no one was around.
We searched the yard together for something I could show
But I knew there hadn't been a train for a dozen years or so.

All the things I did
When I was just a kid-
How far away the memories appear,
And it's plain enough to see
They mean a lot to me
'Cause my ambition was to be an engineer.

Copyright ©1973, 2000 Bruce Phillips

[Prev] [Home] [Next]